The Potentia System

All people have potential. But the average company uses only 30% of the talent that walks through its front door every morning.

The Potentia system focuses on what people can become, not what they are now. We are concerned only with the future, and a person’s underlying capacity: can they learn the skills needed to take on demanding roles?

We achieve this through a structured conversation that explores potential and competence. We observe a person’s behavior over hours, looking at how they deal with future situations that are more complex or uncertain than anything they have encountered before.

An enjoyable and often motivating experience, our conversational format enables us to explore the processes that people use to deal with intellectual complexity and situational ambiguity.

What makes Potentia different?

Research conducted by the Corporate Leadership Council suggests that many conventional tools under perform. Most predict employee success with accuracy of 40% or less. Even cognitive ability tests and work sample tests provide just over 50% accuracy.

But Potentia can reliably answer whether an individual will be able to rise to a high level in the organisation, adapt to changes in fast-moving businesses, and make sound decisions in cloudy and ambiguous circumstances.

The body of theory in which Potentia is grounded partly stems from Elliott Jaques’ Social Stratification Theory, enhanced by experience in a wide variety of organisations, large and small, more than 20 years of refining and tuning.

Almost all test-based systems use self-reporting as their base. But you can’t self-report things that you have not experienced. Moreover, self-reports are often heavily distorted by the person’s self-concept, or sometimes deliberately distorted to gain personal advantage. Tests can therefore only discuss potential in terms of extrapolations of past behaviour. The orthodox counter to the self-report, the 360-degree performance review, often takes up an inordinate amount of senior management time.

Potentia, on the other hand, explores the actual behaviours needed to become competent in the future: you don’t need to predict or guess at the availability of necessary behaviours. It can be seen before your eyes.

How does Potentia work?

Potentia Personal Profiling defines the capacity of an individual to rise to challenges, both Cognitive and Action-oriented in nature. It does so through a structured interview in three parts. The first part, based on case study, explores a person’s ability to Analyse Problems, to Think Creatively and to Make Decisions (the three qualities of Intellect/Cognitive thinking). The second, based on role play, looks at their Drive, Resilience and Sensitivity to the needs of a given situation (the three qualities of Action-orientation/Emotional Intelligence). The third part centers on a challenging project or role that the person has undertaken and identifies the gap between existing competence and future potential.

The qualities of potential are found in the same distribution in any population. They are not affected by any considerations of gender, social, ethnic, educational or cultural background, or language.

Our Pedigree

Potentia is a rigorously systematic and objective process. Our research has been conducted over more than 20 years in 31 countries on five continents and involving more than 12,000 people in industry,commerce and the not-for-profit sector. Our clients include major national and international companies and government organisations worldwide.

We’ve learnt that potential is measurable and predictable, so long as you can gain an insight into the natural ways that people think, react and understand their world.